Iran Strikes US Bases in Kuwait and UAE After Wedding Attack, Oil Prices Spike
- Iran launched missile and drone attacks on US military bases in Kuwait and the UAE on Thursday, escalating a six-month war with Washington
- The strikes came after an Iranian Red Crescent report said a missile hit a wedding in coastal Iran, killing at least 4 people including a child
- US Vice President JD Vance said Washington was investigating the wedding attack but expressed deep scepticism over Iranian state media reports
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Oil prices climbed again this week as fresh fighting between the United States and Iran broke the relative calm that had held for several weeks, with Iran continuing to control the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which roughly 20% of global oil shipping passes.
Iran's army said on Thursday it struck the Ahmad al-Jaber Air Base in Kuwait and Al Minhad Air Base in the United Arab Emirates using missiles and drones.
Source: Getty Images
Kuwait confirmed it intercepted the attack and condemned it as a "grave breach of the rules of international law." The UAE said it had no record of any strike on its territory.
Wedding attack triggers fresh vows of retaliation
According to EuroNews, Tehran said the strikes were revenge for a missile attack on a wedding in the coastal town of Kuhestak on Tuesday night, which the Iranian Red Crescent said killed at least four people, including a child, and wounded more than 50 others. Iran blamed Washington for the attack.
US Vice President JD Vance said the US military was looking into the incident but was cautious about accepting Iran's account. "I know that we're investigating," he said at a White House briefing. "I will say that the Iranian state media has not been a very good scribe about what's happened in the conflict thus far. So I'm extremely sceptical of this."
US Central Command spokesman Tim Hawkins maintained that "the US military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC." The episode drew comparisons to an early stage of the war when more than 120 school children died in an attack on a girls' school, which Washington initially denied before later confirming it.
Iranian Revolutionary Guards chief Ahmad Vahidi vowed on Thursday that Tehran would not let the deaths go unanswered, saying "the pure blood of these oppressed martyrs will not go unanswered."
Six months of war with no clear end
US bombardment of targets across Iran killed at least 19 people over the past week. An Iranian state news agency separately said six members of the country's naval forces died in US attacks this week, though it was unclear whether they were counted among the 19. Iran struck back across the region, targeting what it described as US positions in Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, and Iraq's Kurdistan region.
Despite the scale of the exchanges, Vance pushed back against the characterisation of the situation as a war. "Right now, there is no active shooting," he said, describing the clashes as "flare-ups" and suggesting the active combat phase lasted about six weeks.
The conflict began on February 28 when US-Israeli strikes on Iran killed former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. A ceasefire reached later broke down in July after attacks on commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz resumed, cutting off a route that previously carried one-fifth of the world's oil supplies.
Saudi Arabia condemns Iran over supertanker attack
Legit.ng earlier reported that Saudi Arabia has formally condemned Iran over an attack on the Saudi supertanker Sidr that left two Filipino sailors dead after the vessel was struck by projectiles while passing through the Strait of Hormuz on August 31.
Source: Legit.ng
